News/Commentary

More layoffs at Twitter as Elon Musk cuts another 200 – top lieutenant among casualties

February 27, 2023 | | Print Article

Twitter laid off another 200 employees over the weekend in what appears to be the fourth round of layoffs since Elon Musk took over, the number being about 10% of the social media platform’s remaining workforce.

The cuts reportedly drop the overall workforce to under 2,000, from about 7,500 employees when Musk first took the helm.

The layoffs were announced on Saturday and Musk raised more than a few eyebrows when he offered a cheery tweet Sunday that read: “Hope you have a good Sunday. First day of the rest of your life.

While it’s not clear if this was a reference to the layoffs, it was certainly interpreted that way by some on social media:

Musk is looking to step aside as CEO of Twitter by the end of the year, as seen during a recent interview at the World Government Summit in Dubai.

“I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place in that the product roadmap is clearly laid out,” Musk said, according to Bloomberg News. “I’m guessing probably towards the end of the year would be good timing to find someone else to run the company.”

Among those cut over the weekend was product manager Esther Crawford, seen as a top lieutenant under Musk. Crawford “headed up various projects at Twitter, including the company’s Blue with verification subscription as well as Twitter’s forthcoming payments platform,” The Verge reported.

She tweeted a photo of herself sleeping on the Twitter office floor, wrapped in a sleeping bag and wearing an eye mask.

“When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork,” Crawford tweeted.

Crawford took to Twitter on Sunday to respond to the ridicule from some for being overly committed to her job: “The worst take you could have from watching me go all-in on Twitter 2.0 is that my optimism or hard work was a mistake. Those who jeer & mock are necessarily on the sidelines and not in the arena. I’m deeply proud of the team for building through so much noise & chaos.”

News of the layoffs prompted some interesting replies from social media users… here’s a quick sampling of responses to the story from Twitter:

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